CATCH[ING] THE NEAREST WAY - MACBETH AND COGNITIVE METAPHOR

A new approach to figurative language, cognitive metaphor, is the basi s of an analysis of the dramatic and critical language of and about Ma cbeth. The analysis shows that the CONTAINER and PATH schemata dominat e the salient metaphors of the play, as well as those of the critics w ho have written for the last two hundred years about Macbeth. The anal ysis traces Macbeth's sanguinary career as taking the form of a contai ned path, an analysis available only through a cognitive-metaphoric ap proach. Because cognitive metaphor offers independently motivated anal yses - these schemata and their projections are well documented in oth er poetic and non-poetic language - this approach refutes the claim th at the findings of stylistic studies are predetermined and wholly ''in terpretive'' in the strictest sense.